The Don's Confession, livre ebook

He is the head of one family. Luca is the son of the other, and the two names have not been spoken civilly in the same room since before either of them was born.
October bleeds through the window: cigarette smoke and diesel and the faint yeasty ghost of the day's last bread from the bakery below. He presses the flat of his palm against the ledger and counts the numbers again. They do not change. Four thousand gone, and not to a rival. To his own man's stupidity.
The office above the bakery was his father's before him. Same scarred oak desk. Same crucifix above the door. Same smell of old paper and older grudges. He painted the walls himself, a cream so pale it is nearly white, to make the room feel less like a tomb. It did not work. The paint has yellowed in patches where the radiator hisses, and the floorboards groan in the same places his father's feet wore them smooth.
He caught himself tracing that path once, desk to window to door, and stopped when he understood what he was doing. The man has been dead four years and he still measures the room in his footsteps.
The door opens without a knock. Carmine Ferrara fills the frame the way he fills every room, too much presence and too little grace, gold tooth catching the lamplight.
*Still counting? Numbers don't change no matter how long you stare.*
What follows: the price of a sit-down, a consigliere's invitation, neutral ground that is nothing of the sort, a dragon's tail, a dead ally, a snake's smile, a saint's doubt, and lies told inside a confessional.
*You're in love with a Moretti, and you're hunting a traitor, and you're trying to stop a war that's been brewing since before you were born.*
*What do you want?*
He knows exactly what he wants now, which is the easy part. The hard part is convincing a man raised to expect betrayal that being wanted is not the opening move of one.